Welcome to Weird Science DC Comics, the DC Comics site for the common man and woman. We're not high falutin, just a bunch of dummies who love comics just like you...we just spend an insane amount of time working on this site for no pay. I told you...dummies! So, sit a spell and read our Reviews, News and Articles and if you are really brave, listen to the Weird Science DC Comics Podcast. We triple dog dare you!

I’m gonna tell ya, San Francisco is one of the nicest
cities you’ll ever hope to visit in America. I may have begun my review of the
last issue the same way, but San Francisco is that swell of a city that it can
be championed twice. Down by the Wharf, there’s a museum called Museé
Mécqanique that is a lot of fun—don’t let the Frenchie name scare you, it’s
just a collection of coin-operated games and amusements dating back to the 19th
Century. And almost all of it can be operated by you, the attendee, for a
quarter or two! They’ve got crazy mechanical vignettes and old-timey baseball
games where you can belt a steel marble against a tin backdrop—plus a bunch of
terrific video games like Death Race
and Robotron 2084. Highly
recommended! More recommended than The
Hellblazer #17? You’ll have to read my review to find out!

Explain
It!

Here’s what I expect to read from a John Constantine/Hellblazer story: someone petitions his
magical help because a mutual best friend has died, or the ghost of that actual
best friend haunts Constantine for aid. Using magic, Constantine finds out that
a demon or a different ghost or maybe some kind of ancient evil from the
primordial soup from whence all life sprang is behind everything, and plus it’s
going to end all life on Earth or is threatening the person he’s fucking at the
time. So, using magic, John Constantine finds the Macguffin that will save the
day, and then, using magic, John Constantine chucks it into the maw or jams it
into the ribcage of whatever is the threat, and in doing so one of his best
friends dies anyway because being Constantine’s friend is the surest route to
suicide. Now, I don’t think all
Constantine/Hellblazer stories should
read this way, but there are certain recurring elements that should show what
is interesting about this character: it’s the magic. He is a magician. And,
indeed, I like when he does stupid parlor tricks to light his cigarettes or to
make a bus driver waive his fare.

What we’ve seen a lot of in this series since Rebirth, aside from Tim Seeley’s
all-too-short time on the title (though I hear he’s coming back!) is a lot of
John Constantine not using magic.
Like, magic stuff happens around him, but he’s not doing a lot of it. And
that’s sort of a problem to me, because is John Constantine isn’t a rakish,
rogue magician, then he’s just a slovenly, chain-smoking asshole—little more
than a mid-1990s Dennis Leary. So after being captured by…the Bardo witches? I
could swear it was the Golden Dawn last issue, but it’s some coven of street
clothes-wearing witches that have John Constantine in their clutches, and
accuse him of killing Jenny—you remember, the one who fell victim to that
serial killer which has his prey scrawling “thank you” on the wall before he
offs them—and when an amulet of truth proves he wasn’t lying about committing
this murder that is exactly like a series of other murders occurring before Constantine
arrived to San Francisco. And that takes up about half the issue.

Meanwhile, the other witches who I guess are the
Golden Dawn? They’re making a mandala, something-something about a magical gun?
Look, I just started getting so lost here. And all the while, Constantine is
being talked down to by these suit-and-tie witches and he’s not using any fucking magic. Use some
magic, goddamit! So the thing is, somehow this gang of bad witches kills people
either by or directly after showing them true enlightenment, which is why they
scrawl thank you after their brains paint the walls behind them…I’m just not
buying any of this. At the end, Constantine and one of the ladies from the
witches that captured him get shot, and he gets transported to a Tibetan Bardo
realm, about which I’m sure we’ll learn a lot less in the next issue.

This is just bad. Poorly told, names and concepts not
reiterated (which is really a growing problem at DC Comics these days—we need
to be refreshed every issue, folks, it’s serialized storytelling), and the main
guy we want to see using magic doesn’t even use it. There aren’t even that many
instances of magic in this book, which is too bad since that’s the primary
draw. I wouldn’t have minded if John Constantine wound up in the same dubious
place at the end, so long as he conjured a spirit dragon or made a million
copies of himself or did something
magical to show he’s still got it. Without that, all he have is a shabby Sting
with lung cancer.

Bits and
Pieces:

A slow-paced, confusing story that features the main character not doing a whole lot for most of the issue. The burgeoning threat is weird and doesn't have any stakes attached to it. The art is fine, but certainly not enough to warrant buying this comic book.